Bought it yesterday (acutally my wife bought it). Got it with the faceplate - I snapped the faceplate on, noticed how nicely the aftermarket plates' power buttons are made (MS take note - no bleedthrough), and fired up the game.
I played it well after the point I had planned on stopping. Why? I was trying to figure out exactly why it had gotten a bad review. Fast pace, VERY good balance between racing and shooting, good handling on the cars, good choices in weapons, and excellent track layout. My wife and I both love Burnout (she made me preorder it back in December), and I am VERY pleased with the gameplay.
It had some slowdowns, but nothing on the order of Quake 4 (only other game I played with framerate issues). This is when a LOT of stuff was happening - cars exploding, buildings coming down, etc.
I have to say, Ive seen some shoddy reviews for great games before, reviews which I balked at (I cancelled OXM for such a reason...I think Half Life 2 at 7.5 pushed me over the edge). To those of you who hated the demo and do like arcade racers, try to rent it or borrow a copy. I am VERY happy with my purchase. It is the best game purchase I made for the 360 (I have PGR3 and Amped3). It does have a career mode, with what looks like varied racing options. I have not unlocked everything, been exploring and racking up achievements.
The gamerpoint awards are small and seemingly frequent. I played this game for 2 hours and I had 7 achievements, but only added about 45 points to my score. With my experience with the demo, I raced the one unlocked track, the one from the demo. After the race, where I blew up everyone I could find, I found I had gotten three achievements, one for 10,000 wreck points, one for 50,000 wreck points, and one for 100,000 wreck points. All on the first race; but I don't think that amounted to more than 20 points total. I seem to like that better than games like say COD2 with 50 points awarded for the most basic of gameplay, then nothing for the rest of the game until you win the war (I do not own it so haven't played it on Veteren yet). I did not find a way to view achievements in game however, which means I exitied out to dash often.
On a side note, I can't wait to see OXM's review of Burnout Revenge... something on the order of "same thing we've seen before just packaged up nicely" and "While the formula still works for some gamers, the lack of a plot means there will be low replay value"....heh, actually they like the Burnout series, so I'm sure this won't happen, but I hope you can see my point.
I've probably been playing video games longer than the reviewer from OXM has been alive (i'm an old one) and I'd give this a 8.5 out of 10. Not everone's cup of tea, but EXACTLY what I was looking for - a fun easy to pick up game.